Sue Bolton on the Victorian elections | Green Left Radio

We're probably gonna wrap it up soon.

Um, but [chuckles] I'll just finish, I guess, with, uh, if you can give a brief answer if you can, even though it's actually a big question.

Um, as a socialist, do you think there's, like, I feel like there's a dynamic where taking on the billionaire class as a collective, as the working class, that feels like a really difficult thing to do, whereas just voting for One Nation and getting them to attack immigrants seems like a more achievable, winnable thing to do.

How do socialists use your campaign to, I guess, build the confidence of the working class that you can actually fight back against the billionaire class and win improvements?

I think, yeah, it's absolutely true.

Fighting back against the billionaire class is a huge thing and people can't imagine it, and so people attacking migrants is, is an easy scapegoat and ...

But I think two things.

I think it is good that there has been quite a bit of industrial action this year and the end of last year.

Different unions, council workers, um, allied health, um, hospital workers, um, now the doctors, the teachers and so, and quite a bit of industrial action.

Not as much as there needs to be, but the, uh, the mainly unionized areas and mainly in public sector areas, but it needs to go beyond that.

Um, and also we've got the development of this data center ca- campaign against mega AI data centers, which is against the billionaire class.

And I think the experience of being involved in the campaign against the mega data center does start to put people's attention on the ruling class and the billionaire class because this is an example of it being plopped in people's suburbs with terrible impact for the local people who have these da- mega data centers inflicted on them, but will also have a terrible impact on everyone in Victoria because they're gonna use up our electricity, use up our water and result in increased electricity and, and water bills.

So I think that the campaign against the mega data centers, while it's focused on the data centers, actually does start to point people towards who is causing problems in society, and that is the billionaire class.

And you can learn all sorts of lessons about organizing out of a campaign like that and out of the campaigns that some unions are running at the moment.

But of course, a lot of people are not in unions or they might be in terrible unions like the SCAs, the Shop Assistants Union, which is a bit of a do nothing union.

Um, and so a lot of people haven't had the experience of really good, strong unions.